SEMINAR REPORT

World Social Forum 7, Belem, Brazil   // Friday 30th January 2009 - 12hpm-15hpm

The techno-tools provided by the Social Forums seems to have limited success. The goal of this seminar was to reflect on the strategy of Social Forums regarding technology and knowledge and to analyze and learn from the distinctive organizational form on experiences that do an extensive use of the new technology, such as Wikipedia and the Open/Free Software projects. Members of the Communications and web working groups of different Social Forums were present together with people connected to the experiences of technological innovation and the Free Culture movements and movements for the universal access to knowledge.

The methodology of the seminar was a short presentation by Hilary Wainwright and Federico Heinz moderated by Mayo Fuster Morell and then discussion in groups to end with a collective final plenary.

The seminar at the WSF was a follow-up of a previous seminar on Networked Politics and Technology organised at Berkeley - December 2009.

INDEX MEMORY SEMINAR

A) An sketchy introduction on the relevance of communications technology to the rethinking of political organisation By Hilary Wainwright

B) Social Forums Strategy regarding technology: Politics of technology at the Social Forums. Article by Mayo Fuster Morell

C) Free and open source software. Materials by Federico Heinz from Fundacion Via Libre Argentina.

D) Reports from the groups discussions:

Group 5: On balance between geography (tangibility) and sampling (representative); Web 2.0 Young Engagement and cognitive gap; Spontaneous networks versus Structured networks and the control.Report by Marcelo Santos.

Group 2: On Internet as environment; Free Culture/Software leadership versus World Social Forum leadership;  Representational versus networking tension at the WSF; How would it be a WSF Program 2.0?. Report by Mayo Fuster Morell.

Notes from other groups: “Not more forums without a proper web infrastructure” and more.

E) List of participants at the seminar and organizers.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

A) An sketchy introduction on the relevance of communications technology to the rethinking of political organisation. By Hilary Wainwright

Why and in way do the technics of communication matter to the problem of political organisation at this time?
There are many dimensions to this relationship that we have discussed in the framework of Networked Politics. I just want to brainstorm with you about one aspect of the relationship which has long been at the back of my mind but which I want now to address directly. (This is just a sketch of a line of argument that I would like to think through in a collaborative way)

I start from signs of a shifting understanding of the relationship between political organisation and the means of communication in the practice of those seeking to bring about egalitarian, democratic change.

It is noticeable that in many parts of the world, those organising to change the world increasingly put their energies into developing independent means of communication. This is often a response to experience of the exhaustion or plain uselessness of political parties as we know them as means of political change. Certainly that has been my experience and that of many of my - ‘68 – generation. We founded magazines or radio stations or quickly responded to the possibilities of the new information technologies not so much because we were journalists or media people by trade, but because developing a strong movement-based infrastructure of communications seemed instinctively the way to move forward – rather than bash our head against the brick walls of a party, old or new. It is striking that many of the post Seattle generation(s) put much of their organising energy into developing new means of communication and have generally, with some a few exceptions stayed clear of political parties.

It was interesting yesterday to hear João Pedro Stedile similarly emphasis the importance of developing the alternative media. He saw this in the wider context of on the one hand: the work of raising consciousness, of organizing where people are, either at work, school, or at home, to encourage the social struggles. ‘Only this way’, he said, ‘can the people recover their collective sense of politics, of having enough forces to improve their living conditions’. On the other hand he described the importance of means of communications for stimulating ‘ a full discussion in society about the need for a development project for the country… Brazil needs a project that is directed to the future and that, above all, confronts its structural problems and lays the basis for a more just and egalitarian society.’ He did not talk about political parties beyond the limits of the Lula government.

Can we draw out any distinctive features of this pervasive emphasis on means communication amongst those organising to achieve radical transformation?

Just some initial thoughts:

First, it seems to involves a break from the approach to communications typical of political parties (and I’m being schematic here; of course there were important exceptions) in which communications has been primarily about promoting or mobilising around a programme. It was pretty much a one way relationship: the party leadership making the programme and mobilising the masses around it; and it involved a narrowly instrumental approach to communications.

Now, by contrast , most radical activists in their practice – and increasingly in their theory- see communication as a means of sharing information, exchanging and interpreting experiences and generating and sharing knowledge in order to guide action, develop our vision and our strategies. The shift from political parties towards means of communication was associated with profound shifts in the understanding of knowledge away from a heirarchical view of being knowledgable as the exclusive privilege of a few to a capacity of all and therefore to an understanding of diverse and plural sources of knowledge. In other words, our forms of organisation, from the 68 student movements and the 1970’s womens movement on to most of the networks here at the Social Forum are at the same time forms of inter-communication. And self-consciously so.

We have created organisational forms, chosen tools of organisation with considerations of communication at the centre of our thinking. From the consciousness raising groups of the womens movement through to the networks of the struggles over globalisation we have built ways of organising in which there is a continuing interconnection between processes of action, struggle, experience and processes of reflection, the continuing generation of knowledge through sharing what knowledge we have: a collaborative and experimental search sharing what we know to reach what is still unknown. The shift is profound so it is taking time to work its way through.

Underlying this shift to means of intercommunication is also shift in understanding of the process of transformation away from the notion of a political actor – party or state – acting on society, as if from the outside towards a recognition of the transformative capacities of the oppressed and exploited themselves as knowing and creative subjects; in other words an emphasis on acting to transform the relationships on which existing society depends. This is another aspect of the break from a narrow, one way, instrumental idea of communication as mobilisation or persuasion. Instead it implies a close relation between communication and a Paolo Frierian idea of education as empowerment, as enabling people to gain confidence, realise their power and their potential.

From these features of these shifts in the political culture of radical activism we can identify several criteria by which to guide the design and use of the new means of communication:

Accessibility: How do we use/develop the new means of communication to extend access to means of sharing knowledge and enabling expression of different sources of knowledge of society and with it of sources of transformations and visions of alternatives?

Sociality: Recent social movements have sought to overcome the historic polarisation between the individual and the collective. They have emphasised a relational understanding of individuality and tried to organise in a way which creates relationships through which individuals realise themselves as social beings. This possibility depends a lot on the means / tools of communications. How do we use the new technologies of communication to facilitates egalitarian and empowering relationships?

Self-organisation: What tools facilitate de-centralised self-organisation?

But at the same time what tools facilitate feedback and cross networking; reflexivity and the cumulative processes of developing and sharing knowledge in close relationship to action and past experience..

In other words, the new means of interactive information technology are emerging in a context where political organising has become quite fundamentally about the means of communications.

This applies in a distinct way to those who hold power as well as to the movements seeing to transform power. I have n’t talked about how those who hold power use the new means of communication to maintain and strengthen their power. That’s a central issue for a future discussion but there’s no doubt that it reinforces the importance of the relationship between the means of communication and the development of knowledge, the search for truth. The most striking feature of modern politics is what Harold Pinter called the ‘tapestry of lies’ that are spun by the powerful to maintain their power. Which makes it all the more important that we design and use the new technologies to create lasting but dynamic relationships through which to deepen our knowledge individually and together – and recognise the importance of this in the creation of sources of transformative power.

B) SocialForums and Technology: Hypothesis on why online communities promoted by Social Forums don’t easily scale up (Doc) Mayo Fuster Morell examines why Social Forums have been slow to adopt collaborative, participative, and online community models of web interaction. The case-study focuses on the building of OpenESF, a collaborative tool built for ESF in 2008. She examines both the support and questioning of the openesf platform, and concludes that one of the main obstacles to adoption of Online Community are divisions in organizational approaches within social movements (individual vs collective, open against closed, offline vs online).

C) Federico Heinz - http://www.vialibre.org.ar Federico Heinz is a Latin-American programmer and Free Software advocate living in Argentina. He is a co-founder of Fundación Vía Libre, a non-profit organization that promotes the free flow of knowledge as a motor for social progress, and the use and development of Free Software. He has helped legislators such an Argentina’s Ing. Dragan, Dr. Conde, and Peru’s Dr. Villanueva draft and defend legislation demanding the use of Free Software in all areas of public administration. Materials of the work of the Fundation Via Libre regarding Free and Open Software are availeble at http://www.vialibre.org.ar/materiales/  (In Spanish)

D) Summary of the groups discussions

Report discussion Group 5 By Marcelo Santos

• 1. The first point of discussion was the dichotomy between the relevance and efficiency of the spontaneous networks generated by some catalyst and subsequently organized on a somehow chaotic form through free network platforms - such as the smart mobs, SMS quick gatherings, student movements such as the “movimiento pinguino” in Chile in 2007 – and the potential of intentionally structured networks provided to the organization of social movements, such as the very same openFSM platform developed by the organization for the WSF participants to use. The discussion ended up with the consideration that the first solution, while has been proving to be very effective under the pressure of the urgent mobilization of civil society or even organized social movements in response to the so-called “catalysts”, there is an undeniable risk that they might suffer some sort of control or censorship, since those platforms – such as blogger, mobile phone networks etc. – are owned mostly by private organizations which may find themselves, anytime sooner or later, subjected to the direct or indirect interests of the big corporations. Also, structured networks have one distinctive application which is to reinforce and summarize the debates that take place under the greater dynamic of the spontaneous network organizations.

• 2. Another issue encountered by the group was the so-called “Generation Gap” between people born in the information age breathing bytes, very much used to digital and networked environments opposed to those that come from the atoms society and had to – many still have to – learn or get used to these new office simulacrum and networked multimedia which, just to make it a little harder, renew themselves on a daily basis. The introduction of the concept of “Cognitive Gap” was well received after the group realized that it was not a matter of age, but that of the development of a new package of cognitive aptitudes, either for the younger or elder who face the digital networked environments for the first time. One difference observed regarding this issue was that the experienced digital citizens (off course, mostly younger ones) have much more easiness to connect and therefore to engage in an organized manner than those who are stuck to the former ways of social organization and engagement. Still, another striking difference seems to be the difficulty found in those fast-engaging movements and citizens which is their difficulty to turn that spark that led to the organized movement into a constructive and sustainable network that lives through time and achieve more complex objectives that a mass meeting to counterstrike a new law, a political decision and so forth. The conclusion of the discussion, for that matter, was that it is most important to use the experience acquired by people that used the former structures and determine its patterns of organization and functioning, capturing its essential elements in order to apply them – either denying, translating, adapting or evolving those concepts –to the new kinds of networks that the new complex media systems such as mobile phone networks and the internet platforms, which seem to be the most fertile terroir for the new generation of activists.

• 3.  Balance between geography (tangibility) and sampling (representative). Last but not least, the group reinforced one point that came up in the former discussion (with the entire group): the necessary balance between the geographical representation of the networks – which should concern the potential tangibility of the network, that is, the feasibility of real encounters that strengthen the ties and actions of that network – and the sampling – that is, the representativeness of the members of a network regarding their entire communities. The balance between those two elements may be one of the fundamentals for the smooth development and sustainability of a social movement network of a political nature.

Report Discussion Group 2 By Mayo Fuster Morell

• The discussion on the level of use of propitiatory software is similar and is connected to the discussion on the level of use of infrastructure (physical places, funding, etc.) that we do not control.
• Free Software & Free Culture could be seen as a culture emerging/facilitated by the Internet as an environment. Not consider Internet only as a tool, but also as an environment which facilitate some type of relationships and organizing and make more difficult other aspects.
• Free Software and Free Culture tends to generate leaders (I.e.: Lessig, Wales, Stalman, Linux). If we think in terms of a pyramid, it seems that the growing of the (grassroots) base and the reduction of the mediation sphere is connected to the increase of importance of symbolic leaders at the top. The symbolic leaders would facilitate the base keep together. However, for some, the role of this type of leader seems not only be symbolic as they defined the main concepts (I.e.: Free Software - Stallman, Free Culture - Lessig) and in some degree also the agenda.
• In the Free Software and Free Culture there is a men predominance. This type of leadership could be connected to the men predominance. For Hilary Wainwright, in a movement with more women or more influenced by the feminist self-reflection would be more difficult to generate this type of leadership.
• WSF does not generate the same type of leadership as the Free Solfware/Free Culture, but the WSF is not able to renew its leadership. The Brazilian founders of the WSF keep wanting to have control over it. This is a weakness for the WSF.
• In idea of organizing the WSF was a representational goal. As the World Economic Forum congregate the leaders of the hegemonic world; the WSF was started to congregate the leaders of the alternative world.
• Since then there is a tension between representative logic and networking logic at the Forum. This tension is visible in the things which were considered prioritized in the organization of Belem. The program of the WSF at Belem and the distribution of places was not very well organised, so some people question how is possible that we are able to organize the visit of 5 Presidents and we are not able to organize a program or a map of the territory where the Forum take places?. Even a short training to the volunteers to help people to provide orientation to the forum participants would be of much help. There is the need to priories the needs of participants that search networking. And there is the need to give a formal role to the international networks (Instead of the NGOs founders of the WSF) in the organization of the Forum.
• How could be a WSF program 2.0? It would make profit of clouds of interest. The new technologies could help to make visible the “networks” of people with common interests in the Forums. And it would give predominance to the networks as subjectivities.
• But a part of the tension of representativeness versus networking, some people consider that the problems of organization are also connected to the lack of collective interest. The WSF is able to congregate 100.000 people but the number of people and energy on organizing the infrastructure for the Forum is too low.

Notes on others groups reports: 

* The WSF website is a distaster. There is the need to make the website easy to use and with more funtionalities. No more forums without/until there is a good web infraestructure.
* For world wide networks, (how?) to create descentralized and horizontal diologue on tools and content is a key issue.
* The tools must be used by the core decision makers (of the tools), and their decisions must be open and public and able to be influenced by all using the tool.
* Forms follow function. Platforms reflect structure/character of organizations of networks.
* People > Tools
* USER EXPERIENCE: Need to carefully study how people use and don’t use websites.
* How to face rumors?
* Need to improve relationships with media. Media advocating strategy (radio, newspaper, tv…)

E) Lists of participants and organizers 

Participants: Members of the Communication and Web Commission Of the Forums; Mayo Fuster Morell (Onlinecreation.info); Federico Heinz (Fundación Vía Libre, GNU project); Marco Berlinguer (Transform! Italia); Hilary Wainwright (TNI); Brendam Smith and Timothy Costello (Global Labor Strategies); David Harris (Global Lives project and Institute for the Future); Christophe Aguiton (France); Teodor Celakoski (Multimedia Institute MAMA, Croatia) ; Mark Randazzo (Founders for trade and globalization); Marcelo Santos; Maite Tapia (Cornell University); Ana Margarita Esteves (Brown University USA); Sanali Sridhar (The Openplanning project); Yuonm Mignot-Lefebvre (CNRS Uni. Paris 7); Geraldo Campos (Terminal review); Mallory Knodel (My firts/people link); Tony Kenny (NCAD Dublin); Jessica Beardsley (Ohio University USA); Dimitri Moraitis (indy.gr); George Valoias (Brazilian); Fabio Panico; Philip Aslock (TOPP); Jacqueline Arasi (Open plans/OpenCore/OpenFSM); Walter Baier (Transform! Europa); Celso Borges (Fundacao Gersy Ksemmel); Pablo Ortelano (Epidemia); Sergio Baierle (CIDADE - URBAN Studies and Advisory Center); Chantal Pacteaun (Syndicat national chercheurs scientificus France); Peter Waterman; Todd Lester (FreeDimensional); Hilde Stephansen (Golsmiths University of London); among others.

Organizers: Onlinecreation.info, Transform! Italia, Transnational Institute